


Smoke, Good Memory and Lost Loves All Make for Bad Company

by sackofloveandwater



Series: The Marked [4]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Asexual Character, But like platonic sex talk, Character Study, Gen, Pansexual Character, Pre-Canon, Sex Talk, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 13:20:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9326585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sackofloveandwater/pseuds/sackofloveandwater
Summary: A younger Daud shares a cigarillo with The Outsider. An examination of their relationship as I see it.





	

The call came with no fanfare and neither did he. They both, in their own ways, despised it.

"Daud," The Outsider said, sitting on his shrine, "my dear friend."

The young man looked him up and down. Then smirked, like he was just on the edge of laughing.

"I'm not your friend."

"Certainly not. We merely see each other everyday," Daud turned briefly, "give each other gifts," he dragged a dusty armchair from the corner and pulls the sheet cover off with a flourish, "speak to one another concerning art, philosophy..."

He actually laughed now, it was as acidic as his cigarillo. "You talk, I listen. You give, I receive," he kicked his boots up on the shrine, dirt falling on the faux marble table-top, "isn't friendship meant to imply a certain," he paused, his smoke ribbons around as he gestures, " _even exchange_."

The Outsider smirked, plucking the cigarillo from Daud's fingers and taking a soft, tentative drag. It tasted as he expected, loose and sweet, Serkonan of origin, taken from seeds that came from the Pandyssian Archipeligo. It was nothing like the tobacco he remembered, but... substitutes were inevitable.

He exhaled and the smoke came out black as the night sky, and if Daud was phased by it he hid it as well as his money.

_A poker face for the ages._

"Admo Bass," he began, rolling the cigarillo between thumb and forefinger, "was mute from birth and he was considered the greatest friend of the King of Teeth," he moved to hand  the cigarillo back, but Daud produced another from his pocket. "And his finest lover." 

"Is that some kind of proposition?" Daud asked, laughing in-between quick puffs.

"No," he said with a smile. "I know better than to proposition a man with no interest in sex."

Daud put up his hands. "I'm _interested_ in sex."

The Outsider hummed and took another drag from Daud's cigarillo, this time longer. "I mean beyond the theoretical sense."

Daud looked at him with something approaching offense. "I'm not exactly a theoritian on the subject."

"My dear Daud, I am well aware of your..." he resisted making a face... it came out anyway,"... experience on the subject. I am also aware that you have a vast mind. I'm not surprised you have taken an _interest_ in sex. But you are also a man of intensely fixated desire. If you had a desire for sex it would be your _ambition_ to obtain it. But it is not."

Daud furrowed his eyebrows at that, but didn't interrupt him.

"It is a novelty.  A," he gestured vaguely, the wafts of smoke billowing with him, "curiosity. A mystery to be ferreted out and once solved, shelved."

Daud considered this, then placed the cigarillo tip in his mouth, but not puffing. Contemplating.

"And what's it to you?" he asked.

The Outsider tipped his head to the side and crossed his legs, curling them up to his chest. The cigarillo burned evenly as he brought it to his lips again.

"It is an experience. And I am open to all manner of experiences," he said, breathing in the smoke smoothly. "And people."

The black smoke smelled sweeter as he spoke, tinged in memory, brought back through some lapse in time. He breathed deeply through his nose, getting half drunk on the nostalgia.

"So you'll screw anything that moves?"

He laughed, barked really. "I haven't 'screwed' anyone in nearly four thousand years."

"Who was your last?"

The black smoke still lingered, he could picture a pipe through it, a warm fire. His name, carved in whalebone, whispered along the curve of his ear. He leaned against his thigh and took another hit from the cigarillo. "A seawitch," he smiled. "He could weave a storm like _poetry_."

"One of yours?"

The Outsider hummed. "He was marked, if that's what you're asking..."

"So he was like me?" Daud asked, his mind was working, calculating something.

He considered the question. His instinct was to simply say no. Daud was a knife, surgical, precise, brutal. Banik was... a paint brush, hand stitching, the weave of a fishing net. Sturdy, steady, but imprecise. Beautiful.

The hands and the heart.

The Outsider ran his fingers along his knuckles and took another long drag of the cigarillo. A cloud of black surrounded him now, lingered on his clothing. It smelt like the sea, like shea, like firewood smoke. He melted into the scents, half in and half out of time.

There was certainly _something_ about Daud, though, his lack of formality, his honesty. Something that stuck to him like the taste of saltwater and sweat. He ran his fingers over his chin, savouring a memory.

"In a sense," he finally settled on.

Through the smoke, he can see Daud take a hit off his own cigar. He was relaxed, his shoulders untensed, slumped against the armchair.  "Four thousand years is a _long time_..." he trailed off, leaving the end to his own interpretation.

He laughed, bubblier this time. Almost a giggle. "There's that curiosity again."

Daud was a dark-skinned man, enough to hide a blush. But he had a certain tell, a pulling of the ear, when he became particularly embarrassed.

He laughed again, gentler, flicking ash off the end of his cigar. "I'm not laughing at _you_ , I assure you. You can't particularly help it, and I can tell there's sincerity in the proposition, even if it doesn't come from any special attraction."

"And how do you know that?" he asked, he was tense now with uncertainty. 

The Outsider stretched out his legs a bit in response, unwinding his back, popping all of his joints.

"How old would you say I look, Daud?" he asked flatly, waving his hand to clear the smoke in front of his face.

He scoffed. "I know how old you are."

The Outsider looked at him icily and Daud swallowed his words looking down at his feet.

"Fifteen, give or take a year."

The Outsider tapped his cigarillo against his boot, watching the ash run down onto the floor. It wouldn't last much longer. Such a pity. "And how would you describe my features?"

"You look," Daud began, the Outsider could see him parsing his words, rolling them on his tongue. He attempted a tactful lie, then an honest one, then one that would save his own face. The Outsider took a quick puff as he watched him struggle with the truth. Finally, Daud resolved on abandoning tact altogether, "you look disturbing. Like a drowned corpse that won't rot. And too young for all the things you say. You look," he struggled for a moment, "all wrong."

"Then, tell me, Daud," The Outsider said, breathing out tendrils that moved too deliberately to be smoke, "what are you really seeking when you ask for my companionship?"

Daud shifted uncomfortably. A worm searching for dark under the heat of the microscope.

"I have lived through many lifetimes, my friend," The Outsider said, closing his eyes in contemplation. "I have seen desperate, longing declarations from all manner of people. And despite their talk of my eyes and my words haunting them in their night’s dreams, they have all sought either two things from me. Satisfaction of their curiosity or power through my favour," he opened his eyes again. "I do not indulge either."

Daud was looking at him, his gaze sharp in the low violet light of the lanterns, watching him as a hound watched a wolf it was downwind from. A curious, curious, _curious_ little sheep puppy on its way to bite the big dogs tail.  "And what of your sea witch?" he asked. "What did he seek?"

The Outsider's eyes softened, momentarily.

The smoke around him smelled of the sea.

The sweetest parts, the secret hidden parts tucked away behind a cove, behind the ear, around the small of the back, in the slip of the tongue tinged black. It spilled quiet, like a heart beat, like the dark depths as you dive below and reemerged. He breathed slowly, then he ground his cigarillo butt into the top of the shrines table.

"I have enjoyed this talk, my dear Daud," he said, the black smoke gathering around him, doting. "We should do it again some time."

And then the smoke subsumed him and he was gone, the cigarillo he left behind now burning a, quite ordinary, gray.


End file.
